Powering 20,000 Homes: The World's Largest PV Solar Farm Opens

the local Mayor says 300 days of sun a year are guaranteed.

Wow. That's quite the guarantee. Does he have it in writing? On stone tablets perhaps? I wonder what the signature looks like. ;)

sexy...

And by simply upgrading the refrigerators in those 20,000 homes to more efficient models, those panels could probably power 30,000 homes! It's sad that we won't tackle consumption and efficiency before we start clear cutting hundreds of acres of land for more solar panels. Don't get me wrong, this is great, it's just that nobody wants to talk about reducing our ridiculous levels of consumption, especially in the U.S... *sigh

Outstanding.

i'm confused by these numbers...

20MW peak capacity = 20000 homes annual consumption. That seems like a misleading statistic. Does that mean 20000 homes will be powered by this station? If so, it implies a peak consumption of 1W per home.

Operationally, how many homes does this much solar power generation realistcally supply? Can anyone answer that?

Wow...they sure flattened that hillside and removed a chunk of forest - too bad they could not have used some of the already-impacted farmland below the site instead...

I grew up in southern Spain, and yes he can pretty much promise 300 days of sun, im surprised he didnt say 330. when it rains or its cloudy its like a snow fall in florida, its out of place.

Far as the 20,000 homes, i think it was defintly streched a bit, but not too much. I mean you have to consider these homes normally dont have A/C or built in heating, there homes are smaller, and they spend much more time outside then the average american household. Not trying to champion them off as better than us, its just how it is.

And like biodiesel/ethanol, what of the ecosystem this replaced? Don't we have an awful lot of roofs this could have been on? Perhaps a few warehouses?

d:

I think you have misplaced your grade-school mathbook, or possibly dropped a zero or three on the way to posting.

20MW = 20,000,000 watts

20,000,000 watts / 20,000 homes = 1,000 watts per home

d:

I think you have misplaced your grade-school mathbook, or possibly dropped a zero or three on the way to posting.

20MW = 20,000,000 watts

20,000,000 watts / 20,000 homes = 1,000 watts per home

20 MW = 20,000 KW, not 20,000 W. Enough for an LCD television and a fan. As for the hillside, yeah, unfortunate, but the vegetation looks somewhat sparse. Trying to see the up-side.

Well, now we know how ugly that is. I think it's like a new haircut though, give it time and the white spots will tan. And in comparison to the other "farms" around, it looks the same as crops.

Actually pretty accurate measurement
[Watts DC x avg. hours of Sun/day x Days/year x Sun tracking increase (20%) x System efficiency (80%) x 1kW/1000W (equals 1)] / # of homes =
kW-h per home per year....
20000000W x 4hours/day x 365days/yr x 120% x 80% x (1kW/1000W)=28,032,000 kW-h/year production

(28,032,000kW-h/yr) / 20000 homes / 12 months=
117 kW-h/ home / month.... if they get an average 5 hours of Sun per day, that number is 20% larger (140kWh). The Tracking increase and system efficiency are actually probably low in this calculation too, both of which will increase the total kWh production.

Grade school math book isn't always enough...high school physics book should suffice. There's a difference between power and energy.

Check your bill...
Average US house uses about 8-12 kWh/ day...
Rest of World...about 4-6

As Far as the ecosystem this "replaced" or farm land wasted of land destroyed, its not really true.

The reality is the wildlife is already practically gone, after thousands of years of human action. Seriosly, the woods or field that this "deplaced" more than likely had a form of pine trees, birds, rats, and thats about it outside of worms and insects. Not saying there worthless, but it shocks me the spanish hadn't already flatten this for vegetable fields.
The Andalucian country side is no tropical rainforest, its not some lush animal filled enviorment. Its major predator is probably just the hawks, and any animal larger than your knee is domestic.

And plus, its an extreme step forward. It is so pessimistic to think that 270 acres used for solar panels is some how more destructive to the planet than a power plant.

In VT the average household of four uses 580kwh a month and I believe the average European household is around 150. If your LCD TV and your fan use 20,000 KW they must be huge. Can I come over for your next windy superbowl party?

Perhaps next time they can put some housing in the cool shade under these panels.

I find the "powers X number of homes" stuff to be entirely irrelevant and downright idiotic. The amount of power a home takes will fluctuate wildly from almost nothing to a real lot when the clothes dryer and air conditioning are running.

Also residences use less than a third of the electricity in most areas, so it's that much less relevant.

I'd prefer to look at it as shown in this chart of what a power source would theoretically replace:
http://www.depletedcranium.com/statsvis/energy.html

This is the typical green wishful thinking that surrounds ll these renewable energy projects.
1st - 20 mw = 20000 kw = 20000 homes!?
1000W per house!? Maybe in Afghanistan but not in the west.
In hot Spain where you sure as hell need an air conditioner that will draw at LEAST 3000W. (Yes I know that someone will point out that I should then be "energy conscious" and "efficient" and spend the hot hours of the day siestaing under a fan, but try competing in the global economy with that attitude.)
So it's complete wishful thinking even IF it generated 20MW which brings us to point 2:

2nd - 20 MW PEAK that means at mid-day on a cloudless hot July. Let's do the maths.
The sun doesn't shine half the time so it's now 10 MW.
300sunny days out of 365 = 10mw x 300/265 = 8.2 MW
(remember, that's believing the mayor's claims which are probably inflated).

However the sun doesn't shine fully during the morning and afternoon. We did a project at school where we measured the total power produced by sunlight during the whole(cloudless) day. It was 60% of peak power so it's 40% less. OK let's give these guys a helping hand and say that the loss is only 20%.(I'm trying to show how poorly Solar perform even with the deck stacked in it's favour).So 8.2 MW * 80% = 6.56MW.

Sounds good? Well there is one more factor! Remember, this power is produced in Direct Current(DC), while our grid is Alternating Current(AC). The conversion losses with current technology are 25%. So 6.56 MW x 75% = 4.92 MW.

So our 20MW power station produces AT MOST a quarter of that on average(I didn't include the effects of Winter because I don't know any hard facts on that.) While probably in real life it's about 2MW. But let's be kind to these people and pretend it's 5MW.

5MW is one THOUSANDTH of the output of a large nuclear power plant(and unreliable as well). Let's calculate how much LAND(not tax funded money and not counting the fact that one large hailstorm or Gale will wreck that place totally, while it wouldn't even touch a Nuclear reactor).

According to the company's own website, the plant covers an area of 100 hectares. So to match the output of ONE nuclear power plant our(magically eficient) Solar park would have to cover 100000 hectares. That's 1000 square kilometers. One THOUSAND square kilometers!

So are you still anti-nuclear and pro solar?

When is there going to be legislation passed that requires ALL new homes/commercial space/industrial space to provide 100%of the electricity to be used by said structures? I suppose the commercial/industrial space could only be required for 50-75% since there are usually machines in those places that require vast amounts of energy. Included in this legislation should require all existing homes/commercial and industrial structures be retrofitted to provide 25% of consumption within 5 years, 50% in 10 years and 100% in 15 years (or something along those lines). Grants from the government would be provided to pay for the vast majority of the new panels/wind turbines or what ever other new technologies are available. Money for the grants would come from tax on new structures and new gas guzzler purchases. Financial stuff is just an idea but we really need something like this enacted and SOON.

I know this picture seems a little brutal, with the solar farm carved out of the hillside, but it helps to think of the following:

Solar panels are more efficient at capturing sunlight than leaves. And the vegetation on that hillside seems quite sparse and arid. They're not taking arable land out of cultivation. Producing biofuels requires significant fossil inputs, which makes it far less efficient in terms of CO2 saved per acre. Solar will have inefficiencies relating to storage in batteries or in the grid, but all in all, this project, no matter what it looks like from the air, is probably a good use of land.

Because Spain has a pretty progressive gov't right now, I assume that environmental assessments were carried out to ensure that the land had no particular conservation value.

PS- I agree, it would make a lot of sense to put these on rooftops, the ultimate wasted space

Read D Q...

There simply are too many complications to require ALL homes to generate some fixed percent of their own power. Such as where I live... not enough wind to even bother with and the pitch of my roof is exactly wrong for solar. Other people are in houses that are shaded by trees or nearby taller buildings. Some people live near the coast where coastal fog routinely blocks much sun.

In certain geographic locations it might make sense to require NEW homes to be built with solar PV or solar thermal (space heating and water). But if people call for sweeping mandates without considering the realities that will cause lots of other people to resist, simply because what makes financial sense for a person in one situation may be financially crazy for someone else.

To the author/editor...

I've seen this same mistake over and over from various sources. This is no where near the largest solar farm. It may be the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) farm, but California has solar farms of hundreds of megawatts that have been operating for decades. Nevada just had a new concentrating solar farm go online at 64MW. California has plans which may result in close to 2GW coming online in the next 5 years.

someone needs to start making it perfectly clear that PV solar only provides usable energy for 1/4 to 1/5 of a 24 hr day.

I always see articles saying it "powers 20,000 homes while ignoring that it really just powers "Powers 20,000 homes for a few hours a day"

For a real-time display of power over time of a PV solar plant go to
http://www.greenwatts.com/pages/SolarOutput.asp

RhapsodyInGlue

Do you have any links to information on these larger solar farms that you are talking about here

To the author/editor...

I've seen this same mistake over and over from various sources. This is no where near the largest solar farm. It may be the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) farm, but California has solar farms of hundreds of megawatts that have been operating for decades. Nevada just had a new concentrating solar farm go online at 64MW. California has plans which may result in close to 2GW coming online in the next 5 years.

Certainly they could be divvied out among the roofs of some of the homes they power?

Thank you RhapsodyInGlue that is a valid point about not all homes being suited. I hadn't thought of that before.

how many trees died to build this???

@RhapsodyInGlue:

I don't know whether the change was made before or after your post, but nothing in the post suggests that this is the largest solar farm. And your stats about the California solar farm are all wrong; the largest solar farm in the world (which is solar-thermal, not PV) has not been operating for decades. The solar farm in the Mojave desert, which will have 20,000 solar Stirling engines, does not even approach 1GW of capacity, much less 2GW in the next five years.

To everyone here discussing the peak capacity and how many homes it can power:

You're all making the mistake of confusing watts and watt-hours.

The projection that it can supply the quantity of energy consumed by 20,000 homes is measured in the watt-hours of energy it produces in a year, since watt-hours are the primary measure of electrical energy.

Watts are not a measure of energy, they are a measure of power; in physics, power is defined in units of energy per unit of time. Watts measure the rate of energy production, whereas watt-hours (or kilowatt hours, for 1,000 watt-hours) measure the amount of energy consumed. 1,000 watt-hours of energy can be consumed in many different combinations: a 100 watt light bulb running for 10 hours, or a 1,000 watt microwave running for 1 hour, or a 11 watt compact fluorescent bulb running for nearly 91 hours. Remember: watts measure the rate of energy consumption or generation, not the amount of energy.

A power plant's capacity must be enough to meet peak needs, or the plant gets overloaded and shuts down. This is where the peak capacity measure is important. However, the measure of how many households worth of electricity it produces is somewhat indirectly related of the peak capacity. A 700MW plant, if it only operates at rated peak capacity for a brief period each day when people all turn on their air conditioning, will provide less over-all energy than a plant with less capacity in a place where people all use more electricity on a general basis through inefficient appliances and lighting.

Understand the difference? Dividing the generating capacity--a rate of power-- (in megawatts, or millions of watts) by the number of homes (from the number of homes worth of energy) to get some measure like "1,000 watts per home" is meaningless; homes don't use watts; they use watt-hours.

The days of sunshine are accurate because when it rains in Spain it mainly falls in the plain. The solar panels are on a hill so they shouldn't be affected by the rain.

"The solar panels are owned by groups of investors. It’s expected to generate an estimated annual income of $28 million"

That is all that needs to be said. Alternate energy sources will not be fully developed until they can make someone a profit.

It's not hard to live comforably on 500kwh of electricity per month. That's about half of what the average US home currently uses. Energy-efficient heating/cooling, appliances, and lights make this easy to do. Reducing consumption, without a reduction in comfort, is a win-win situation.

I think we can all agree that any production of electricity that does not come from fossil fuels is at least a step in the right direction. This being said, if you really care about the global environment and the future health of the planet you must include nuclear power as it is currently produced in with fossil fuels. Not only is nuclear not renewable, it creates extremely dangerous waste and by-products which we will all have to deal with in the distant future. I do not understand how this can possibly be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

I actually did a tiny bit of work related to this project. The hill was not a forest, and was not a hill in fact, just an elevated plain with shrubs and grasses. The area is very dry. Terrain leveling was minimal.

1,000 Watts per home is a reasonable figure when averaged out and if the calculation is made in terms of kW/h, not peak power. Not everybody has their A/C on at the same time, or any other appliance for that matter. All utilities and services are engineered around the statistical properties of the served population. This is why phones don't work if everybody tries to talk at the same time (as on 9/11).

As for per-home consumption, I personally use about 250 kW/h per month. I have CFL's, one small A/C unit I use as little as possible, one Pentium 4 PC I built with a high-efficiency power supply, a notebook computer, a stereo, a conventional 20" TV, and a washer/dryer. For heating, hot water, and cooking I have natural gas. I don't live in Europe, but this is a common setup in Europe and in Spain. The figure is thus fairly reasonable, if "home" is not interpreted as "house", but rather a mix of houses and apartments.

An all-electric home would certainly use a lot more kW/h, so those of you with all-electric homes can certainly interpret the 20,000 home figure as inflated. In any case, this is just a simple measure meant to give the general public a sense of scale, since most people simply don't understand what a kW/h actually is, present company excepted.

metatron has done some fuzzy math. Apparently he believes nuclear power plants output 5 GW. Unfortunately, a large nuclear plant averages about 1 GW, and many plants have half that output.

metatron is also concerned about space. Has he accounted for the space required for uraniun mining? For uranium enrichment? For radioactive waste disposal? Has he accounted for the water requirements of a nuclear plant, which must be sited on a significant body of water? The ultra-safe transport infrastructure? The cost of providing security for every nuclear plant, 24 x 7, against terrorism? The lawsuit risk the industry does not want to face (and wants to cap by law)?

PV solar requires no water, no mining, no enrichment, no disposal, and little maintenance. Security is a non issue, you could dump a truckload of armed Al Qaeda fanatics in the middle of the Jumilla field and they couldn't do a darned thing with it that would hurt anybody. All you need is a retired cop to guard the place from bored teenagers.

And the total lack of a water requirement means metatron's land argument is irrelevant. Very cheap and dry land is good for PV. In fact deserts are great for PV. Are we low on desert and arid space? A quick look with Google Earth will supply the answer. We don't have thousands of square km of desert and arid lands, we have millions, on every continent.

Why not solar collector heated sterling engines on a tracking gimbel?

http://www.stirlingenergy.com/

South Spain sounds hot and PV efficiency goes down when they get hot. I thought solar thermal was more cost effective for solar farms like this one. Plus PVs need silicon and manufacturing PVs have some impact on the environment. Sterling engines sound more material friendly.

120.000 panels for 20.000 homes? Why not give each house 6 panels? It wouldn't be such a dramatic scar in the landscape as this enormous farm seems to be..

At first glance I thought that was a mining scar.

This is cool!

Everyone's talking about how many homes it will power but you skipped over some important stats here.

Namely that the panels are owned by investors and will generate revenue. That's great news! (Although it didn't say how much it cost to set up.) If solar power can be demonstrated to be a profitable investment as well as an ecological one, that could give a tremendous boost to green power initiatives.

Folks

If our local utilities would allow us to put solar on our homes (especially areas of the country with a lot of sunny days) we would be able to cut the green house gases considerably. However, the local electricity folks can't figure a way to cheat the public out of the electricity ... yet. So they stand in the way of adoption of solar (at least in the major Texas cities).

Just my 2 cents ....

For the "let's find and point out EVERY wrong in EVERYTHING" crowd: let's not forget to calculate and add the total environmental damage you've done to the world whilst sitting on y'r kiester, reading Treehugger.

I agree with BenSchiendelman and everyone else who pointed out that these things should be on houses. It's sexier than an oil refinery but it'd be a hell of a lot sexier if it were spread out over the roofs of a couple thousand buildings.

Incidentally do solar panels reduce the urban heat island effect, like green roofs do? Does anyone know?

why u kill all the trees how dare u all.

why u kill all the trees how dare u all.

Does this make sense?

"Annual production will be the equivalent of the energy used by 20,000 homes".

"It’s expected to generate an estimated annual income of $28 million."

If annual production is equal to about 20,000 homes...then how are they making $28mill a year?

the key to getting off oil is not just going solar. it is going solar + hydrogen. build a large solar farm. use the electricity to separate hydrogen from water. store the hydrogen in cannisters. and bingo, you have transportable energy. much like lpg, propane.

people have argued that hydrogen is explosive. but then, most fuels are.

a major side benefit of this whole operation would be the production of drinking water.

the best place to position a plant is somewhere near water, where there is a lot of sun, no floods, no hurricanes, etc. the state of nevada may be a good location with all it's desert, but the concern would be a supply of water to produce the hydrogen.

in thailand, they have what I think is a good location. located between bangkok and phuket, lot of sun, no hurricanes, ocean water on both sides. stick something in there, and you could become a major supplier of hydrogen, electricity, and drinking water for the whole region. thailand is right in the middle of a number of countries including vietnam, laos, cambodia, singapore, burma, malaysia, and indonesia.

picking the solar technology to ramp this up is still a consideration. stirling energy? or PV?